The Vicarious Rex Recording studio in Walla Walla is officially closed…the good news is that Walla Walla musician Zach Winterton has taken over the former space and is offering recording services for Walla Walla artists. If you are interested, contact zach via the Pumpkin House Studios facebook page http://www.facebook.com/PumpkinHouseStudios.
It’s sad to say, but the final days of Vicarious Rex Studio in Walla Walla are drawing near. At the end of the summer we will be closing our doors and moving to Seattle. Currently we are booked up and can no longer take on new projects. If you are looking for recording services in the Walla Walla area drop a line to Pumpkin House Studios on Facebook. They are excited to start working with local musicians and will be more than happy to help you out.
Thanks to everyone who we have had the pleasure to cross paths with during the last 3 years in our recording space. It’s been a blast and we can’t thank you enough for supporting the VRex mission to inspire, create and promote the area’s music.
Finally, just because the studio is shutting down doesn’t mean Vicarious Rex is calling it quits. We have a lot of big plans to rejuvenate the music label including a series of EP releases and some new shirt designs (stay tuned in for more info).
As always, Rock On!
-Chris
New member of the mic locker, a brand spanking new Cascade FatHead II ribbon mic with upgraded Lundahl transformer. A thing of beauty….
VRex will be closing it’s doors for the month of April to catch up on some spring cleaning and to take some much needed R and R. If you have any questions about the studio during this time feel free to shoot an email to chris@vicariousrex.com. Be back in May!
If you are looking for something to do Saturday, Jan 15 why
not grab a few bucks and head down to Cordiner Hall to see the
Walla Walla Dance Company’s winter production, “The Snow
Prince”.
Welp, it’s exciting times for the recording studio. With the recent release of Avid Pro Tools 9, we are finally making the change to a Pro Tools based recording platform. The upgrade should be fully implemented by the first of the year and will provide an industry standard workstation, new and improved tools and better compatability with other studios.
Ingredients: A slab of MDF, some PVC pipe, a few scoops of sand, a handful of nuts and bolts and a spritz of black spray paint. Mix it all together and you’ve got yourself some speaker stands.
What is “The Abyss” you ask? It’s a place where rogue resonating sound waves go to die….and it’s also the code name for the newly constructed vocal isolation booth in the studio. Da beej and me put on our hard hats and work gloves this past weekend to develop the storage closet in the back of the live room into a fully functioning vocal booth. Unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to take any pictures of our hard work, but once we take care of a few finishing touches we’ll finally be able to put together our “tour of the studio” photo gallery.
The addition of the iso booth to the studio adds a lot of functionality. Not only is the booth a great acoustic environment to record vocals, it also will serve as another room to separate live performers and isolate guitar amps….all good things.
Woohoo!
-Chris
First things first, we are aware that we have not quite been holding up our end of the bargain in terms of updating with new posts. We don't have a very good excuse, but a glorious start to the new year, one Caribbean cruise and the inevitable end of all of our time off sure didn't help.
Alright! Now that we got that out of the way we can get on to the good stuff. The Jumping Fountains full-length is coming along nicely. All of the primary instruments (drums, bass, guitar and synth) have been tracked and await the nimble fingers and finely tuned ears of our sound engineer (and fearless leader), Chris Bigley. JF should be hitting the vocal booth, as time allows for it, over the next few weeks and beyond that, and a few other small instrumental parts, the CD should be finished. We are all starting to get very excited about the way the songs are coming together and are absolutely giddy with the thought that we will be able to share them with you in the not so distant future.
Until that day arrives, however, we will be sure to maintain a higher rate of "postage" on the VREX main page. Many thanks to all of you that have been checking back for updates, we will do our best to keep you fully supplied with the stuff you crave. For the time being, enjoy these shots of JF bassist, lovingly known as, "da beej".
[inline] |
 |
 |
 |
Pendulum clock rock,
Jake
As with all things in life, the first day of recording the album didn't exactly go as planned. To begin with, a faulty alarm clock contributed to a late start, and once we all made it to the studio, we found many more things to slow us down (including some mysterious disappearing drum hardware).
The better part of the day was spent tuning up the drums and developing tempos for scratch tracks, after which we were finally ready to hit record on some drum tracks. I don't know if it was the KFC bowl he ate for lunch or the hours of listening to a monotonous tone generator while we worked on the drums, but once it came time to lay down his tracks, Zach was a one-take machine. He powered through five of the eight songs in about two hours, making up for a lot of the day's lost time. In the end we came out with some rockin' drums tracks and a great start on the album.
Stay tuned for daily updates throughout the process of recording the album. Next up, more drums and then on to bass and guitars.....
Chris